This invention relates to the manufacture of pompons; a method for making pompons, and an apparatus for producing pompons; more particularly, to pompons whose streamer members and whose handle or gripping member are secured to each other by means of ultrasonic welding.
Heretofore many methods for constructing pompons have been employed. Pompons are constructed by attaching a plurality of streamer members, which constitutes the ribbon or the tuft body, to a shaft, handle or other gripping member. Gripping members are usually made of either plastic or wood and the streamer members are made of some suitable cloth, paper or thermoplastic material for durability. Various methods of attachment of the streamer members to a gripping means are known, but all suffer the disadvantage of being labor intensive and thus time-consuming and inefficient. Conventional methods of pompon construction require a human operator to manipulate the gripping member and streamer members so that each may be properly positioned for attachment by mechanical means.
Many conventional manufacturing methods require that the tuft or streamer body be prefabricated to have a collar member from which the individual streamer members depend. The collar member of the tuft body is placed by a human operator about a handle member and secured thereto by either glue, cement, staple or clamp means. Although other construction methods are also known, they too require a human operator to position the streamer members to the handle member whereupon the human operator effects a mechanical attachment of the streamers to the handle member. All conventional methods of attachment of streamers to handles require attachment by mechanical means. Often in pompons produced by conventional methods the staples become detached or the streamers and handles work loose of the glue or clamp means from the continued stress to which a pompon is subjected during use.
Conventional methods for attachment of tuft bodies to handle members are not suitable to accomplishment by an automated construction method, since each requires the time-consuming process of human placement of the tuft body into position on a gripping member for mechanical attachment. Thus, conventional construction methods are not suitable to the development of an automated assembly procedure for the efficient production of pompons.